It is the natural right of every human being to be happy to
escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural
as the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only
because of our ignorance that we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom.
To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize
completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to
all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is
unshadowed joy.
Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we
are being forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination
that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles
that lie before us. Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of
trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our
family circle is complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and
joy is replaced with agony. Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an
enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material
luxuries. There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and
yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be. There was a time when we
had health and strength; but they have both departed and no trace of a reason
appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of
lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor
heartaches. We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until
they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them.
The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far
and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method
by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the
evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly. It is as though
we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously
scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow and painful and our
bruises many. But if we could press a button that would turn on the electric
light we could then make the same journey quickly and with perfect safety and
comfort.
The old
method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed
facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the
personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human
being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with
information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native
ability he happened to be born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical
man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very
partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically
unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression
in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts,
which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are
evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious
effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be
achieved and wisdom attained. Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled
from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of
its suffering.
Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us
from those we love. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear is
because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human
evolution. But the moment our ignorance
gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its
place.
Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer?
Because in our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of
all life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us
through other people a situation from which there is no possible escape except
through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the
causes we have already generated are fully exhausted. When spiritual
illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the
last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever.
Why do people suffer from poverty and
disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their
existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their
lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we but the wisdom to
understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their
evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson is fully
learned these mute teachers will vanish.
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